Broxton Comment-MB-001-16

PER QUALCHE DOLLARO IN PIÚ [FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE] (1965)

Per Qualche Dollaro in Piú – For a Few Dollars More – is the second instaliment of director Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, released in November 1965, a year after the original A Fistful of Dollars. Clint Eastwood returns to play the iconic Man With No Name, this time teaming up with fellow bounty hunter, Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), to stop the reign of terror of a deranged bandito named El Indio (Gianmaria Volonte). It’s desperately violent film about greed and revenge, but was an enormously popular success, and again proved influential in terms of the progression of Leone, Eastwood, and composer Ennio Morricone.

Truthfully, Morricone’s music is a direct continuation of the spaghetti western sound established A Fistful of Dollars, with similar orchestrations and similar thematic application; nevertheless, several individual pieces stand out as being worthy of special note. The main title theme, “Per Qualche Dollaro in Più,” is one those pieces Morricone wrote which sounds awful on paper, yet somehow works perfectly in context – a raw, aggressive, rhythmic piece for strings and percussion featuring several spaghetti western staples: the twangy sound of a Jew’s harp, Alessandro Alessandroni’s whistling, gruff male voice chanting, solo recorder, electric and acoustic guitars. It’s still astonishing to me how Morricone came up with these disparate sounds and made them define an entire genre.

Elsewhere, the “La Resa dei Conti” theme has some unexpected conflicting tonal qualities that come to light through the use of different instruments under a variation on the main theme from the first film, including a church organ which gives it a definite ecclesiastical overtone. “Il Vizio d’Uccidere” is a pretty romantic theme for solo electric guitar, solo oboe, strings, and choir, which has a soothing, almost tragic quality, before becoming more lively in its second half. “Addio Colonnello” overflows with emotion, a gorgeous combination of reflective woodwinds, sighing strings, noble brass, and an increasingly prominent choir. “Poker d’Assi” is a piece of raucous honky tonk saloon piano music. “Carillon,” which reprises and expands upon the lullabyish glockenspiel motif also heard in “La Resa dei Conti,” speaks directly to the plot point in the film regarding Indio’s musical pocket watch, which he plays before engaging in gun duels, only firing when the chimes have ended.

As is the case with all Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks, For a Few Dollars More has been released dozens of times on vinyl LP, cassette, and CD over the years. I personally have the 2004 CD edition released by BMG Ricordi, and I am satisfied with the music included, but there is an expanded version released by GDM Music which features bonus cues rendered in mono, and several original songs.

Track Listing: 1. La Resa dei Conti (3:06), 2. Osservatori Osservati (2:02), 3. Il Vizio d’Uccidere (2:24), 4. Il Colpo (2:21), 5. Addio Colonnello (1:44), 6. Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (2:50), 7. Poker d’Assi (1:16), 8. La Resa dei Conti – Duello Finale (2:33), 9. Carillon (1:10). BMG Ricordi LC00316 , 19 minutes 25 seconds.

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